Tonight at 11...

After week one of the internship (and a request for information from AJ), I decided it was high time that it make an appearance in the blog. So here goes:

Instead of taking a fifth class this semester, I am interning at the London Bureau of NBC News. I know, pretty cool, right? It is definitely an amazing opportunity. I'll be working Mondays from 9:30-4 and Wednesday nights from 4-10. There are three other interns. I've met two of them and they are really nice, so it will definitely be fun getting to know them, as well as all the other people in the office. There are British, American, and Spanish people working at NBC, so I'll be meeting all sorts of new people. It's great to get out of the Notre Dame bubble twice a week. Even though I'm in London, we only take classes and live with ND people, so an internship is the perfect way to branch out. And while I'm branching out, I will be learning a whole lot. Because my first week basically taught me that I am a little bit out of my element in the broadcast journalism world, ha, ha.
My limited experience with broadcast journalism was taking a class of the same name during the spring semester of my sophomore year with Gary Sieber, former news director and current Saturday meteorologist at WNDU in South Bend. I really enjoyed the class and thank goodness I took good notes or else I would not know what half of the people in the office were saying to me. Here's a little vocab lesson, NBC style:

vox pops=man on the street interview (don't ask me how they got that one...)

logging=transcribing an interview

paps= still haven't figured that one out yet, although I've heard it several times throughout the day. But who knows? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the accent...

There is a lot of down time at the internship, but also some exciting moments. I got to test the headset and microphone for the correspondent appearing on the Today Show on Monday. I talked to the producer in New York, who gave me the terribly difficult task of counting to ten and then counting backwards from ten. I also astounded everyone by being able to use a typewriter, which is apparently a very rare skill among college kids these days. And on Wednesday night we went to the theatre where Mamma Mia is playing to ask people about why they are ABBA fans. Apparently something is going to run on the Today Show about ABBA World, the new ABBA museum that just opened here in London and they needed some shots of fans. It was really cool to be out on the street with a camerman! People definitely looked at us as they walked by, trying to figure out if we were famous or important reporters or something. But instead of Brian Williams or Anne Thompson, they just saw Maura and Kristin, the lowly interns. But maybe some of the footage will end up on the Today Show. Keep an eye out for it!